Munich and Berlin, Germany - Die Mutterficker, Die

Our first destination was Munich, and what a great decision it was. We've spent our days getting acclimated to being on the road. Having lived in Munich between the ages of 22-24 I have very fond memories and know the city very well. It's always wonderful to take Hannah here to share my experiences with her.
Its been a challenge getting used to the time zone but we've managed to fend that off by sleeping 14 hours the first night. This was made possible by a combination of sausage, beer, and a dark and comfy Courtyard Marriott hotel room. By the end of this trip we will have enough Courtyard Marriott material to fill a book. We even got a couple of morning workouts in, but the German disbelief in air conditioning their hotel gym quickly made us feel nauseous and we were required to rehydrate on Munich's finest.

And we re-engergized on some fantastic bratwurst from the Viktualienmarkt!!!

We had a couple of great days, no touristy excursions, just wandering around the city, spending time in the park, eating when hungry and drinking at most stops. We were very happy to learn that Starbucks offers free WiFi at all locations so we made the occasional stop in to catch up on email, update our social status, and allow Hannah to wake up her family with an impromptu FaceTime session.

We had the pleasure of spending a great deal of time in Munich with our good friends Ciaran and Danka who you may remember from such great hits as "The Goldberg's in Munich, 2012". Their son Finian is adorable as ever and last year they had their second, their daughter Liona. I got a somewhat inebriated call on New Year's Eve this past year from Ciaran. I had trouble understanding most of our conversation, but what I do remember, and always will, is Ciaran and Danka asking me to be Liona's godfather. Needless to say it was a pleasure and an honor to finally meet her. I was also thrilled to see that she got my good looks.

We had a good jam session....

There was a time when Ciaran and I were the Kings of Munich, that was 15 years ago....this is us now.

Our next destination after Munich was Berlin. We did a bit of research on how to make it the 500km north to this city with rich history through the ages and until very recently a divided city. It turned out that we would have spent upwards of 500 euro to take a train or fly. We decided to rent a car and drive. We suited up in our 6 speed diesel VW....sure not to miss a minute....

We couldn't stop patting each other on the back and giving each other bromance style high fives at this genius decision. It was six hours by car, beautiful German countryside, and on our own schedule...genius. Those sentiments quickly evaporated when, about 2 hours from Berlin, we were stuck in the single worst traffic we had ever sat in. This is coming to you from the Goldbergs who always make it a point to live in cities with the worst traffic in America...so, consider the source.


That's not to say that we didn't make the most of it.

We arrived Berlin safely, after a 10 hour journey that should have taken closer to 6...but we were here and ready to hit the town. Our Courtyard Marriott welcomed us with open arms.
We quickly found that we had absolutely no idea where anything was in Berlin. It was late on Sunday evening when we arrived. If you know anything about Germany you know that nothing on Sunday is open...period. We also quickly realized that we had left the colorful, flamboyant land of flowers and bier gartens for the much darker scene of Berlin. We should have been prepared as Berlin is a lot like many parts of New York in style....more grungy, more hipster, but we were definitely not prepared. Hannah donned pink jeans and sneakers with an orange purse and I was decked out in a bright blue T with shiny new sneakers....we screamed tourist...or target.
We did, however, find a bar that really made us feel at home. The death metal made you want to sing, and the bartender made you want to run to your nearest eyeball piercing parlor and get one just like him. This is my rendition of the song at the time, which was entitled "Die, Motherfucker, Die":

We spent most of the next day attempting to see Berlin. I say "attempting" because the entire city is shrouded by a landscape of construction. We had never seen a city in such a state of "repair" but it was distracting, and the haze of dust that surrounded much of the city center was gag-inducing.

We know that Berlin has tons to offer, but we weren't really feeling the vibe. I had been to Berlin before and had a great time, but at this point we were ready to move on. As we sat in the Courtyard Marriott hotel bar and tried to figure out our next move we found a great flight directly to Krakow, the problem is, the flight left in two and a half hours. In finding this our best option, I saw a side of Hannah I had never seen, and I was mightily impressed.
She mobilized an effort to do the following in the incredibly short time frame of 30 minutes:

• Get me out of my overwhelmed state and helped me book the ticket to Krakow
• Packed our backpacks
• Convinced the concierge to take a package to the UPS equivalent for us and drop it off
• Convinced the Marriott to reduce our stay to $50 due to "family emergency"
• Got me on the phone with our hotel in Krakow to move our reservation and arrange a car service from the airport
• Got a taxi to Berlin airport
• Made our flight with time to spare

Krakow here we come!

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Die Cure für die Common Cold - The Goldbergs in München Day 2

The weather and overall mood of Day 2 in Munich could be described in one German word, fantastiche, if it wasn't for the fact that both Hannah and I decided to pick the most inopportune time to get colds.  Good thing we are in Munich where they have perfected the art of curing the common cold....beer and yes, you guessed it, roasted pig.

We left the house bright and early at 1pm, or as the locals say, 13:00.  I'd like to say we could have left earlier, but we spent most of the morning trying to do the math and figure out what time it actually was.  As we stared at the clock we noticed that at 12pm it just kept going, so we figured 13:00 was after midnight, so we went back to sleep.  We blamed the inability to sleep on jetlag, not the fact that it was 1pm.   I kid, I kid, we knew what time it really was.

Back to the story....

We launched into a fabulous Sunday walking trek around Munich.  We started somewhere that I had been dying to return to for 12 years...my neighborhood and apartment at 59 Gabelsbergerstrasse.



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I was very careful to not run into any of my old neighbors, even as I walked into the building and posed for pictures under my old balcony.  As the loud American with loud friends, I was never much appreciated by my fellow tenants at 59 Gabelsbergerstrasse, but I always think, "if only the had gotten to know me, they would have thought I was a super guy".

12 years ago, I drank beer on that balcony

12 years ago, I opened that window

12 years ago I lived here

We proceeded to take a beautiful walk around Schwabing, the hip, young, neighborhood where I spent that wonderful two years as a local foreigner.  I was thrilled to hear Hannah tell me so many times how happy she was to get such a local's view of the city.  It was also amazing to feel the same about the neighborhood's cafes and shops as I did 12 years ago.  Even though I have experienced more, lived in different places, and my resume has grown, the lens through which I was seeing Munich was the same.

We walked around Schwabing to Univeristat which is home to several universities, and many students.  The cafe's were alive with activity.  In Germany, nothing is open on Sunday, the only options are to spend time with family at home, in parks, or cafes.  This is something that is hard to get used to as a foreigner but culturally brings the emphasis back to what matters.

Coffee and Frühstück at Tresznjewski

Univeristat Munich

Expecting clowns any minute

The Englischer Garten is arguably one of the most beautiful city parks in the world.  It's huge open meadows are filled with families, soccer, dogs, and in the summer, naked Germans.





The Englischer Garten's 2 large biergartens are amazing places to enjoy a nice day in the park.  Hannah and I spent an hour having a beer and pretzel at the See Haus bier garten before moving onward to our next destination.


The next few hours we spent walking through Munich, past the monuments, through archways of unknown significance, frolicking through Odeonsplatz, The Residenz, Maximillianstrasse, and back to Marienplatz.  Hannah and I both agree that this is the ideal way to spend vacation, enjoying a city, together, as foreign locals.

We finished our walking tour with a stop at the Augustiner Halle in Kalsplatz, serving the finest in all  German Helles...Augustiner.

With our cold growing worse it was time to continue to feed them by finishing our evening with another Augustiner and more pig at our local pub.  What a great way to end Day 2.